


What You Bring With You, What You Leave Behind

by parsnips (trifles)



Category: CSI: Miami, Empire Records (1995), Without a Trace
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Arguing, Character Death Fix, Dysfunctional Family, Faked Death, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Family Issues, Fist Fights, Gen, Growing Up, Love, Personal Growth, Phone Calls & Telephones, Presumed Dead, Talking To Dead People, Voicemail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-01
Updated: 2008-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-11 08:28:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trifles/pseuds/parsnips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucas grows up; Joe sells the Empire; Speed leaves Miami; Jack finds him. And, again, Lucas grows up. CSI:Miami/Without a Trace/Empire Records crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Bring With You, What You Leave Behind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lalejandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/gifts).



> Posted in 2008. Spoilers: Up to season 5 of _CSI: Miami_, season 3 of _Without a Trace_, and the movie _Empire Records_.

  
Tim. Speed. Speedy. _Timmy_.

He calls up Joe and leaves a message on his office voicemail. _I'm not dead, okay? Don't ask._ And then Speed takes the back way out of Miami and hopes like hell Alexx doesn't squeal to Horatio.

\--

Ten days later he's in New York. Getting out of Florida without Horatio noticing was actually a lot harder than he thought it'd be.

Craigslist finds him a room for the week in a small Brooklyn apartment with a lot of cats. There's a late-night place across the street that'll makes omelettes anytime you want. The woman who owns the apartment is still awake on the living room couch, laptop blaring something with explosions, when Speed remembers just how good Joe's gotten at finding lost people.

And that Joe's office probably collects the phone numbers of all incoming calls.

It's midnight. He decides not to answer the cellphone, which is smart because it means maybe Joe can't trace the call to his location, but is actually pretty dumb because it means Joe's going to go to voicemail, and Speed's managed to avoid being yelled at by Joe for a good five years now. That's a record to make any honest man proud, and Speed's not above keying in the erase function to keep that record solid.

\--

He listens anyway.

_Lucas. When I find you, you're gonna_ wish _you'd been shot._

And after a long pause, where Speed imagines that Joe is staring at something in the distance and counting rock beats in his head, _That Caine guy has a problem._

There's another silence, and in the living room the sound of explosions has gotten louder, and Speed's gearing himself up for whatever Joe's going to say next when the message suddenly stops and a tinny woman's voice is asking whether he wants to delete.

\--

He does delete it, eventually. He also checks his old cellphone's voicemail, and finds one message. It's Horatio. Drunk dialling "a memory." Jesus.

\--

He leaves the girl's apartment as soon as he wakes up the next day and finds a flop house in the Bronx. This means that he has made the terrible decision not to leave the city, which further means that he shouldn't be surprised when Joe knocks the hell out of his graffitied door at four AM and drags his sorry ass out to get eggs whether he wants it or not.

Speed doesn't want any damn eggs. Joe says he wants eggs. Speed's eating eggs.

They're not as good as the omelettes in Brooklyn.

The diner is open for morning workers, subway jocks, a lot of cops. Joe and Speed blend in, and it's weird.

Joe looks... old. Not old old, not pulling himself along with his walker old, but older than the last time Speed saw him -- which was end of high school.

Speed was going off to Columbia because that's what you _did_ when you were done with school, you left your summer job and your family and you did something with yourself. Joe had thrown the going-away party in the back room of the Empire, bought all the food, took away all of Berko's booze and what he could find of Eddie's pot before going into his office, locking the door, and providing the mood music for the next two hours.

No one asked Speed why he was moving to the other side of the country, but the question was there. Only one person had even brought it up, and it wasn't really a question when he'd asked anyway, so Speed didn't really have to answer him. Talking with Eddie had been like that.

Midway through his sophomore year, Speed had gotten a call from Deb. She told him Mark was dead. Which wasn't really a surprise, but he'd always thought Deb would go first. (Looking back, he shouldn't have said that out loud. She didn't hang up, but she did laugh at him a lot and _then_ hang up.)

Speed had called Joe and talked to him for the first time in six months, and it turned out that Deb had been lying through her ass. What was actually happening was that Joe was selling the Empire. And that Mark was in Canada. More about the selling thing, though. At which point Speed hung up, and had told himself that studying for his psych test was a lot more important than selling music had ever been.

He changed his major to bio right after that, and Speed didn't even pretend it had nothing to do with Joe.

Looking at him now, Joe has shorter hair, darker except for two wings of white coming from his temples. He's gained weight, too, but not a lot. Joe's watching Speed eat scrambled eggs, and finally says, "You should've tossed the phone."

"Did. I got one of those disposable ones instead."

"On your credit card?"

Speed shrugs. "Horatio saw me autopsied. Dead people don't do credit. Occam's Razor. Somebody'll come up with something."

"So you use a dead man's money, buy a phone, and call me? All while trying to leave town? Which you still haven't explained, by the way."

Speed stabs at the last portion of egg. "Didn't want you to worry."

Joe goes with it. "What was there to worry about? Lucas McAllister never popped up on the registers. It wasn't until I called Lieutenant Caine that I found out about _Tim Speedle_."

"It was a good name."

"_Speedle._"

"Speed. I like Speed."

Joe says nothing. He drinks his coffee and looks around the diner while Speed signals the waiter for the check. Joe puts down his cup and links his fingers. "I'm not really one to talk," he says at last. He looks up from his hands. "I'm back to Jack Malone."

So not "Joe" anymore, and he already knew "Reaves" had been some midlife crisis thing about Superman or something, but it felt -- too fast.

The check comes, and Speed's put down the cash for it before Joe can even snag the receipt. Speed smiles, and it feels a bit weird on his face. He thinks about saying something like, Be seeing you, or, I should've done this the first time around -- or, for a quick second, The cheese stands alone.

And the moment's gone, because actually, Joe's already standing, nodding, walking out, and Speed's sitting there and feeling like an asshole because he paid for Joe's coffee when he knows, deep down, Joe would've bought Speed's breakfast, cuffed him on the head, and then let him crash on his couch for the next six months.

Joe's Joe, whatever he calls himself.

\--

Speed moves six more times in the two months following. Twice is because Horatio visits the city and Speed finds himself accidentally living in Jersey for the duration of those visits. The other four times is just trying to find a place that wasn't horrible. None of the moves is because of Joe.

\--

The phone rings, and Joe picks it up. His voice is muffled, hoarse from sleep, and tense.

_Maria?_

Who? "I don't think so," Speed says.

There's a pause. _Sorry. I'm waiting for a call._

"At two in the morning?"

The pause is longer this time. _I'm not going to point out the obvious._ There's a shifting sound, like cotton sheets. _So, uh... what's on your mind?_

Which is a really, really good question. "Nothing much."

_Uh huh. Everything okay?_

"Yep, everything's good."

_You got someplace to live?_

"Yeah, it's nice." Actually, he's back in that Brooklyn apartment. He can live with the cats.

_Right. Right. Are you working?_

"I think so. I mean, I have an interview for a lab tech job at Columbia. It's not CSI, but that's sort of a point in its favor."

_Is there... I don't know, someone special in your life?_

Speed frowns and watches the traffic lights blink from his window. "That's not something I... no. There's no one special in my life."

Joe coughs. _So you called me in the middle of the night to tell me everything's just... okay?_

Speed's coming up with a reply, something that might actually make sense, and then-- _Dammit,_ Joe murmurs. _Other line. I'll call you._ And he hangs up.

\--

Speed remembers when he first moved in with Joe. The bachelor apartment with a pull-out couch that Joe said would be his until he could get a bigger pad. The small-but-potent collection of 45s Speed still, to this day, has never been allowed to touch. The bookcase full of psychology textbooks, case studies, beginning biology, intermediate statistics, and bootleg concert videos. The general lack of his mother in the nearby vicinity.

About a week after he moved in, when he started to wonder if maybe Joe really was going to keep him, he asked about the psych books. And Joe sighed and sat down and told him in one quick breath about his master's degree. And the FBI. And the burnout.

Speed remembers wishing he hadn't asked, because as great as it was to find out that he wasn't the only crazy one -- and that Joe was on leave from the FB-fucking-I, how cool was that? Did he have a gun? Could he still legally arrest people? Were their phones tapped? Did he have catch phrases? -- all it really meant in the end was that Speed could never, ever believe that this arrangement would last.

And so he knows he shouldn't have felt angry when he found out Joe was going back. It wasn't like he hadn't warned him, even then. It was Speed's damn fault for forgetting that none of it was forever.

\--

A week later, Joe hasn't called. Speed starts work at the lab, though, and decides he doesn't care.

\--

The girl he lives with, Lou, looks up as he comes back to the apartment at 11 PM again, bringing a wash of cold air with him. He smells like sulfur, which made the train ride fun. She apparently notices, because before he can make it to his room she asks him why he bothered coming to New York when there were chemical labs in cities with a lot lower cost of living.

There's nothing bitchy about it -- it's just a question. And he's really, really tired. So he says, "I faked my death in Miami to escape the kind of creepy attention my boss was paying me, and I think I can hide in New York." He pauses. "Mostly."

She gives him a long look. She says, "That is so dumb. South Dakota would have been a better bet. Or a shack in Canada. Somewhere that actually requires a layover if you try to fly it."

Which, okay, come to think of it, is true. He doesn't have an answer for that. When he shrugs, her eyes narrow. "Faked death is fine. This boss thing is interesting, and I demand you tell me about it later. But if you're going to keep staying here -- is Lucas even your real name?"

And Speed has no idea what to say.

\--

Two weeks since the phone call. There's a cute girl who works beneath the hood next to him. Judicious use of his investigative skills has led him to believe she is dating the other cute girl in the lab. Speed still doesn't care about Joe.

\--

Here's the thing about H. Horatio. Lieutenant Caine. Whatever. He's creepy.

Not in the hitting on him kind of way, which at least Speed is familiar with (and maybe, minus the "creep" vibe and the "boss" aspect, he would've gone for that), but in a sort of demented priest way, like any second he was going to pull out his flail and whip himself bloody for thinking sinful thoughts about the young and nubile Tim Speedle.

(Nubile. Ew.)

Except there was _also_ this part where it felt like maybe H. _likes_ the flail, and while Speed's no slouch when it comes to basic knowledge of S&amp;M principles, it starts to get really uncomfortable when you know you're participating in someone else's sex act whether you want to or not.

Sometimes Speed could sense Horatio watching him, feeling like an immoral man and getting off on the self-degradation. It made his skin itch.

Maybe talking Alexx into covering for him while he made a run for it was a bit much, but Speed has seen Horatio when there was a loose end to a mystery -- better to "die" and make a run for it than _know_ Horatio was looking for him.

Joe has a similar streak in him -- the loose end thing, not the sex thing -- so maybe Speed should've known better than to call. Or to move to New York. Or to even let Joe take him to the diner, to see him, to know he was okay.

Speed almost wonders what exactly H. said to weird out Joe, and he knows he could ask -- he thought he knew he could ask--

It's seventeen days later and Speed is so full of not caring that he can hardly believe he even gave a damn about Joe just following up on what he goddamned said he'd do.

\--

Christmas. Speed isn't sentimental about it. He remembers his mom's idea of the holidays -- let's skip that -- and Joe gave presents like he wasn't sure if this is something he should be doing, you know, ever. Last year a lab tech intern in Miami gave everyone a little bottle of adulteration strips with a cheap bow stuck on -- which no one _said_ they tried out as soon as they hit the bathroom to find out what the specific gravity of their urine was, but, you know, yeah.

Corey made everyone come to her Empire Christmas parties no matter what else was going on in their lives, and it was the Christmas of 1995 -- two months after they raised enough money to buy the store, and three years before Joe decided to sell it anyway -- that Eddie said something really meaningful and, even more surprisingly, cogent. Everyone swore they'd never forget it.

He spends this Christmas in the lab, _Nevermind_ on infinite repeat through his headphones, which is just fine, dammit.

\--

He thought if he ran away, he'd leave _everything_ behind. But, really, he's tried that a couple of times now, and things just keep following him.

This time, it's... it's the feeling that he's got _skills_, right? Investigative skills. He was a goddamned CSI. Change means loss, he understands that by now, but maybe he'd gotten it wrong, maybe he didn't have to lose _everything_.

For instance, even after all this, he still has Deb's number. And Deb has Gina's. And Gina knows all.

\--

A month. Just about. Two days from New Year's, a whole Disney dalmatian pack of days since Horatio'd looked soulfully at him, and a _month_ since Joe said he'd call. (He feels like an idiot every time he does this math.) He's paying rent on the room, now. He still doesn't know if Zoe and whatsherface are dating. Columbia is filled with idiot hipsters who he swears to God don't resemble himself at eighteen whatsoever at all. He told a lot of people he was either alive, or temporarily dead, and he heard a lot of gossip -- so maybe it's okay that Joe hasn't called, because Speed has to rearrange his brain, and it'd be better if there weren't witnesses.

It's now eight PM, and someone's knocking at his bedroom door.

It's Lou. She hefts one of the cats and says, "There's a guy outside who says he knows you. He's kind of bleeding on the doormat, though, and if you have those kind of friends then maybe we need to renegotiate the lease."

"Did he give a name?"

"Sounded like it started with a J, ended with a moan of pain."

Never mind about that brain rearranging. "I'll go look."

Lou sits down with the cat and picks up her cellphone in readiness. For the camera or the 911, Speed doesn't know which. He looks through the front door's peephole. It's Joe, weaving slightly in place, eyes closed, and there's a wash of blood down half his face.

Speed's not even sure how Joe _found_ him when he's clearly barely conscious, but he also never found out how Joe knew when he lost his cherry at the tender age of seventeen, so really, Joe's a man of many mysteries. Speed says something to Lou, and he's worried he might have said _that_, but he's also unlocking the front door at the same time and she's not dialing, so maybe it made sense. He pulls Joe in and sits him down in the bathroom -- a moment later a gallon of betadine, three rolls of paper towels, and a large cardboard box of medical supplies is shoved in, and Speed wonders just what those cats get into.

Joe's head is lolling as he sits on the toilet. Speed checks his airways, his breathing, his circulation -- Joe's nose isn't broken, but it is seriously contused. He's not breathing too well, but his mouth looks fine under the blood and he seems to be doing okay on that front. His heartbeat is the slow end of normal, no trace of any adrenaline-soaked action. When he checks his wrist, though, he sees that Joe's hands are ragged messes, knuckles split, a couple of nails torn, some black gunk smeared in everything. The betadine becomes a better and better idea.

"What happened?"

Joe's mouth moves, but there's no voice. Joe tries again. "Got in a fight," he says.

"Hospital?"

Joe starts to shake his head, flinches, coughs (not blood, which is pretty good all things considered), says a little more strongly, "No."

"Any reason?"

Speed has a guess.

"Record." Joe's head swings back and makes a horrible noise when it hits the tile. He tries again. "There would be a record. Trouble."

Score one for Crime Boy.

One part of Speed is processing that, Miami CSI-style, adding it to the other pieces, moving the motives -- the rest of him's gone still, focused on the body in front of him. It's still breathing, which is different, but he remembers Alexx once taking him through the rough highlights of emergency diagnostic medicine when they were both stuck on a scene, waiting for it to clear, the dawn air dewing up their kits-- and even more distantly he remembers Corey pushing A.J. onto one of the backroom tables one afternoon at the Empire, practicing the everything-but of CPR, Speed and Mark nudging one another's shoes and stifling laughter until Gina came up and laid the breath of life on A.J. personally. Speed remembers pressing his lips together and wheezing through his nose, knowing he looked stupid but still trying to retain some measure of dignity. He also remembers Mark giggling helplessly beside him, just looking happy.

"What's the problem with trouble?" Speed asks, nonchalance dripping from him. "Or a record?"

Joe looks exhausted. He doesn't answer. Speed pours betadine over Joe's hands, mumbles an apology when Joe hisses at the burn, and finally taps four extra-strength Tylenol out of the bottle in Lou's medicine box.

"Take these," Speed says, and Joe dry swallows all of them. It looks painful.

After a moment, Joe sighs, and then levers himself off the toilet lid. He's looking better, less zombie. "Sorry," he says, and opens the bathroom door, and nods at Lou, and then he's weaving toward the door and actually starts to _leave_, _Jesus_, not gonna happen, because now that Speed's got him pinned in one place there's no way he's letting him out of his goddamned _sight._

Lou makes a discreet exit out the front, saying something about omelettes and raising her eyebrows meaningfully in Speed's direction, and that's how Speed finds out he said all that stuff out loud. Since when does he have to actually _say_ every stupid thing he thinks? 1995 was _a really long time ago_.

Joe blinks at him. He's stopped moving toward the door, though, which is a plus.

Lou's living room has a landscape painted on the wall. Her coffee table has nail polish splashed across it, looking like a fabulous Pollock visited. He took some photos of it after he'd signed the subletting paperwork. There's a lot of stuff like that in Lou's living room -- like A.J. was living in her closet or something and turning her apartment, slowly, into a giant art project. It'd have to be the A.J. from the Empire days, though -- now he's grown up and bitter and weird and a detective in Florida apparently. Who knew?

Joe passes one hand over his face. Behind the blossoming bruises, he looks sad. "What is it, Tim?"

The lamps dim, the landscape turns grey. Speed's voice comes out wrong. "Don't call me that."

And _bam_, like a switch, Joe's back. It's the rage that gives it away. "What the hell am I supposed to call you?" he grates out. "Huh?" He stalks up to him, adrenaline getting rid of the last of the zombieness. His voice goes lower. "I don't know what you want, _Speedle_. Or, Tim, or Lucas, or whatever the hell you're calling yourself these days. Figure yourself out before you get on my case. You want me to go away? Fine. You want me to stick around? _Fine._ But you gotta give me a goddamn clue here, because I'm not sure how much more of this jerking around I can take."

"I'm jerking you around? _Me?_" Speed forgets himself, steps up. He's taller than Joe. Another stupid way stupid things have changed. "_I_ called _you_, Joe. _I_ did that. You haven't given me the time of day since you sold the Empire, it's been five years since you even _spoke_ to me, and I think it's pretty damn insulting that the most you can manage now is to show up on my doorstep for a band-aid and a 'fuck you' before running off and--"

Joe shoves Speed into the wall, hard, and the sound cracks through the apartment. Joe curls his bleeding fists around Speed's shirt and yanks him up.

"Let's get this cleared up between you and me," Joe says. "I thought this started when you decided to be a genius and fake your own death, but apparently that was just some kind of denouement to the personal passion play going on in your head. You want to know what happened with the Empire?" Joe's eyes are dark, and they're angry, and they're sad. "You all stopped being dumb kids and starting being dumb adults. You all left to go make something of yourselves, and I realized I didn't want to be a kid anymore either. So yeah, I sold the Empire. And I went back to work, and now I'm trying to live my life. What are _you_ doing?"

Joe looks like he wants to punch him. "'Cause the last thing I heard," Joes says, close and mean, "you were busy being _dead_."

Joe's fist curls -- and it must hurt, because Joe winces, and lets Speed go, and stumbles over to the couch. He puts his head in his hands. And that seems to be it.

Speed slides down the wall until he can feel the floor bump into him. One of the cats, the black-and-white tuxedo, comes out of Lou's bedroom and strops around his ankles. He doesn't remember if Joe likes cats. Or dogs. He'd never asked Joe for a pet when they were living together. There was always that tiny fear that maybe that would be the straw that broke the camel's back. Then again, he'd thought that about a lot of things. Which, considering things like that Atlantic City gambling fiasco, _was_ probably kind of dumb.

And all through this, information clicks steadily into place in Speed's head, like a background whine that's slowly becoming more and more annoying. This is what it felt like. Sitting in the backseat, talking to Calleigh and Eric on a stakeout and thinking nothing and everything and _click click click_.

"D'you like cats, Joe?"

Joe doesn't say anything. He drops his hands, though, and looks at him. "Yeah," he says eventually. "I like cats."

Speed levers himself up and picks up the tuxedo cat. He sits down on the couch beside Joe and dumps the cat in his lap. The cat immediately jumps off and runs under the couch. Joe almost laughs.

It's easier because Speed doesn't have to look at Joe. It's harder because he's sitting next to him. Speed counts the colors on the coffee table and waits.

Joe says, "My wife's divorcing me. She's trying to get full custody. She's going to take them to Chicago. What's in Chicago? I was doing better, I thought. Turns out it wasn't better enough."

Speed exhales. _Click._ "I know." He waves his hand, magic trick, he's Atlantic-City Lucas and Dead-Boy Speed and for the first time in ages he feels competent. "I called Deb. And then Gina. And then Gina told me what she'd heard from Corey, who'd heard it from A.J., who, by the way, dated one of my coworkers after Corey, and is all kinds of bitter but pretends he isn't, so maybe you want to keep an eye on that. Uh. But. Yeah. I know. Also, about your kids. Which was a surprise, but not to everybody else, who all thought I knew, and I think I covered for you, but when I called Mark, I sort of mentioned, and I think he's writing a song about it now, so heads up on that front too. He said no details, but he's a man in search of a rhyme scheme, and I'm not sure where his line lies."

Joe snorts, and smiles, and winces when he flexes his hands. There's traffic outside, and maybe the smell of omelettes. Joe says, "I hate all this stuff."

"I know."

And that's all he says out loud. Finally. He's got a pile of stuff he doesn't say, like, I know you're terrified of losing your kids, because maybe you remember what is was like with the Empire -- or, really, me. I know I was a dick to you, and it wasn't your fault. Or I'm pretty sure it wasn't your fault -- still working on that one, but at least I know that's where I'm heading.

I know you went and got into a fight somewhere because you may be a high-flying FBI agent now, but there's still a drummer in there, and drummers think best when they're hitting things. I know enough about divorce proceedings that random spates of violence aren't so hot for custody battles.

I know, or can guess, what you were doing the last month. I'd like confirmation, but on the other hand, I'm not sure I could handle you actually, I don't know, _talking_. Lucas beats out Speed on that one.

There are more things. The having-kids thing is a big one, for the record. Maybe we'll work them out, and maybe we won't but we won't care anymore. I know that I can't say any of this, and I know that really, I don't want to. It'll work out. I'm me, and you're Joe, and that won't change.

"There is one thing I don't know," Speed says. They've been quiet a long time. Lou's gonna kill him if he doesn't show up soon and tell her what's going on.

"And what's that?"

"What exactly Horatio said to you."

Joe knocks him lightly on the head with an open palm. Speed smiles. "The man's insane. He tried to interrogate me. About a _dead kid_." Joe pauses. "You ever get the impression he was a little obsessed with you?"

\--

Joe went home. He'd offered his couch, if Speed wanted to stay with him, but Speed's... okay with where he is. He is making Joe take him to dinner tomorrow. Also, he's going to find out if Joe's nose really is broken, and then very subtly not make fun of him for it either way.

By the time Joe'd gone, Lou had managed to take over the kitchen of the place across the street and when Speed stepped in she shouted something he couldn't make out and then made him something with cheese and spinach and maybe crack cocaine. He understands now why they let her take over.

Joe has kids. Horatio really _is_ a creep, it wasn't just in Speed's head. The Empire is gone, finally. He's burned his CSI bridges -- sort of. Except for one thing.

It's morning. He doesn't have to be in the lab until four, and he's got his little cheap cellphone in hand.

He lets it ring. It's the private number, the one that won't route him to her beeper or anything. He knows it'll go to voicemail.

_Click._

_You've reached Alexx. Leave a message._

"Hi," Speed says. "It's Lucas. Just letting you know I got in safe. Have a good new year."

And then he hangs up, tosses the phone into the garbage can, and goes to get an omelette.

  
END


End file.
